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Will Warner really send out the legal letter?

I Googled "Hinkley". Seems to be a valid English name. They can't copy right a name. Admittedly A search of Roy+Hinkley links up to their IP rather quickly.

Therefore, I suggest: "Joy Hinkley"

(I'm going to side-step the question for a moment and target my current WIP)

I started chapters 1 & 2 at night. Then I ended the 2-chapter battle and switched to regular state. For regular state (Meeting the horse, going on picnics, being happy, etc) I've been trying to focus the characters on sunshine and blue skies. As the time of Armageddon approaches, I've been increasing the cloudiness. Focusing on the greys. Nova's eyes are no longer "blue" - they're steely. Once the hammer falls, I plan to go back to darkness.

(jumping tracks again)

Star Trek TNG really worked their sounds on the bridge. There was the normal bridge sounds. Then, they'd be approaching an area where they think there are hostiles. The computers would make this double beep on like a 10-second pulse. Even though the characters were talking about misc things there's this meep-meep (pause) meep-meep (pause) in the background.

Then suddenly you'd have a weedle-weedle sound and shortly after "Captain, sensors detect incoming ships"

(ok back on topic)

Apollo is standing on the Ark of the Covenant discussing. [Just then] the Captain turned and said "Incoming ship"...

Of course, it isn't really "just then". He probably saw the captain take a call while he was talking. Maybe he heard sensors beeping with important messages or saw a crewman waiting to speak.

Here's an attempt:

Really it depends on how "sudden" you want the events. The one scene where they're in the palace and the bombers break past security I think you was very sudden. These scene, sudden doesn't seem required.

Also, I'm partial to colours and sounds. Having consoles flash in red or having patterns of reflected light on the ceiling is neat & re-usable. It can also be discarded when not needed.

Just some ideas

In a roundabout way, I was saying "Just then" is kind of ok

re "ten words in a battle scene"

While I recognize that battle scenes should lean to shorter sentences, this moment occurs before the battle. I picked that phrasing because it gives us sound. So important sound to help situate the reader in the scene.

Even if it were mid-battle, I wouldn't recommend you take the short sentence trick as a hard rule. Sometimes it's ok for Rambo to stop and take note of the bird chirping between the crunch of enemy footsteps in dry leaves as they approach the grotto he's hiding in.

Not sure why bombs "fall" in space tho.
Once the dreadnought was destroyed,not sure why the hulk "fell" either

Rivera

Goodness. Re-reading Ender's Game and this is some kinda editing disaster. Dropped commas, spelling issues (minor). Wowzer in chapter 15 where two characters speak in the same paragraph.

I should nit these and mail the book to Tor, demanding a replacement copy

Mission "kill the contraction" not going so well. I'm finding myself stuck on "he'd" as in "he would" and "he had"

"If he thought she was going along with this, he'd best rethink his plan"
"She would love to board that car. Stars! She'd do it in a heartbeat"

My story is covered in these. To preserve the meter, I'd (I would) spend more time reconstructing phrases than actually writing

It came across as more than blind luck, so you might want to highlight that. Example... say there's a virus on our work network. Well there's north of 5 million files on our various servers. Maybe I guess the file that contains the virus and get it right on the first try (1 in 5 million odds?). I may turn to my coworkers and say it was blind luck, but they'd all be thinking I had some secrets that I knew how to find it and wasn't telling them.

With Barbara, I got the same impression. I got the impression she thought it was luck but that it was really inner brilliance. The way James Bond will magically choose the corner to hide in that the villain will foolishly overlook. Bond doesn't know how he does it, just as Barbara doesn't know how she does it. Neither of them are no less brilliant for not knowing how they arrive at their results.

Not sure a good approach to fix this. By the time Diana can remark it's out of character, I'm pretty certain it will be too lake and the genius status will already be baked in. We'll see.

I got the impression he understands the basics, so that part was conveyed well. But you know... comprehending the (basic) nature of the curvature of space is not the easiest thing, even if you can't work out a time dilation equation to save your life. I get the impression that if he had to compute eigenvalues on a ticking bomb he was chained to, he'd make it out at least a few seconds before detonation.

Herein lies the fun. As far as the story's concerned, there's no difference if she had a temporary burst of genius or if she closed her eyes and pressed random buttons.

(granted, I have a limited view of the story so far)

Now that I think of it, she could even get the same effect by spilling her coffee on the control console.

Don't laugh, but oddly, I think sudden onset genius is the best option as you have it. Barbara's not really in my cross hairs because she's developed well

Name fountain

hah... don't assume it's correct if it's in a first draft. I just sprinkle commas like confetti